


The Project

by AmandaRex



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Fitzsimmons Secret Valentine, Jemma may be chill-deficient, Romance, Sci-Ops AU, Sci-Ops Era (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), The FitzSimmons Network, Unconventional Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 01:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6033460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmandaRex/pseuds/AmandaRex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are moments—nearly always coming when we least expect them—that change our lives forever. For Leo Fitz, that moment comes when Jemma Simmons presents him with an unconventional project proposal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Project

**Author's Note:**

> Many many many thanks to lettertoelise for the fantastic job she did betaing this and offering me many helpful and encouraging suggestions.
> 
> This near-reality AU veers off just before Fitzsimmons would be approached to join Coulson's team, presenting them with a different future.
> 
> Written for castielsdwinchester on Tumblr, my giftee for the Fitzsimmons Secret Valentine 2016 exchange. The prompt was "a FitzSimmons baby or babies"...I tried to go a slightly different direction with that while still fulfilling the prompt.

Fitz was one of the last two people left in his lab at Sci-Ops, though he'd been so focused on his work that he'd barely noticed when their coworkers had filed out to start their weekends. He had yet to notice the time, engrossed instead in the prototype design spinning on the holotable in front of him as he analyzed it for potential weaknesses.

"Simmons," he began, using his hands to enlarge a section he was concerned about. "Are you sure about those human tolerance threshold statistics? I could increase the throughput if I make an adjustment here," he said, reaching blindly behind himself with his other hand for Simmons to make sure she was paying attention, "but it may go outside the safety boundaries you've set."

His hand connected with her, grabbing a handful of her lab coat, and he felt her move closer as he manipulated the model to illustrate his point. That made her silence a little concerning, especially after it continued without even a thoughtful "hmm" from her. He thought over what he'd said and it occurred to him that she might take it as questioning her judgment. That wasn't what he meant at all.

"Not that I don't trust your parameters," he added, hoping she would understand his clarification if she was annoyed with him. He braced himself and glanced at her, expecting to see exasperation, or worse, outright irritation. Instead, she was staring at him instead of the prototype, giving him a look he could only describe as speculative. Her eyes had gone just a bit glassy, as though she was seeing him and not seeing him at the same time.

He knew that look, and it meant something was percolating in her mind. Sighing with relief that she wasn't angry with him, he waited, giving her a space to think. His mind raced, trying to anticipate what she was going to say, but he had a feeling she was about to surprise him with something that would take their project from a decent idea to a brilliant one. 

She shook her head as though she was physically clearing some sort of fog that had collected around her, and her gaze sharpened again.

"Oh, I'm sorry. You asked me something?" she said, but he held out his hands and shook his head, not wanting to interrupt her. She usually needed to think out loud at this stage, hear the words bouncing off the walls around her, for the idea to completely coalesce into something solid and more refined.

It took several long moments for it to occur to Fitz that it appeared she hadn't heard him at all, and she was not about to present him with a paradigm-shifting idea for their project. He pushed away an irrational flare of disappointment, rubbing at his tired eyes and yawning.

"It was nothing that won't keep until tomorrow," he said, glancing at his watch and noticing how late it was. "We're coming in, aren't we? Even though it's Saturday?"

"Hmm?" she said, tilting her head and looking him over in a way that made him feel oddly like she was sizing him up. "Saturday? Oh, yes, tomorrow's Saturday. We should come in. We need to finish this up."

He sighed in frustration. "I was just _saying_ that, Simmons. We need to get you home, get some food into you, and let you get some sleep. You seem a little fuzzy. Perhaps we've been working too hard?"

"No," she said, blinking a little and staring off into the distance. "Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Perhaps you're right. We should go home."

"Are you all right, Simmons?" he asked, concerned for her now that she was acting so out of sorts, yet denying there was anything wrong. "Whatever it is, you know you can tell me about it, yeah? You aren't annoyed I questioned the threshold you set, are you?"

"You think the threshold isn't accurate?" she asked, clearly a bit hurt, and he felt dumb for upsetting her when he could have let his original comment slide under the radar.

"Not exactly. I wanted to talk to you about how much wiggle room there might be. I was probably wrong about it anyway," he said, trying to get them out of there before starting an unnecessary row. "What were you so preoccupied with?" he asked, hoping to change the subject.

"What?" she asked, but he knew she'd heard him. This was a classic Simmons technique to stall for time.

"All right, now you _have_ to tell me." He tugged at the collar of her lab coat to wordlessly prod her to slip it off, so he could carry it with his and save her the trip of hanging it up. She slipped the buttons open quickly and shrugged it off, handing it to him, avoiding his eyes the entire time.

"It was nothing, really. I was just thinking about how it's nearly August," she said, as though a puzzling, open-ended statement like that was a complete answer.

"Really, Simmons...are you feeling all right? It's the end of _June_ , not July. It won't be August for weeks yet. Are you worried about our project timeframe?"

"I'm not worried about this project," she said, pointing at the prototype design hovering over the holotable in front of them. "I think we need to take on another project," she explained, but there was an odd tremor in her voice, as though she had some reason to be nervous about pitching an idea to him.

"Is _that_ all? You've come up with a new concept and you're not sure you're ready to talk it over with me yet? Even if it doesn't pan out, you have to know that won't affect how much respect I have for you. Look at me, I've had some downright ridiculous ideas myself," he told her, trying to cajole her into confiding in him.

"It isn't really the kind of thing we usually work on," she offered, still sounding hesitant.

"Are you talking about a private project? Something commercial?" he asked, growing frustrated that she wouldn't just tell him.

"No, not commercial. Private, though, certainly," she said, quickly. "Promise me you'll wait at least thirty seconds before you say anything after I tell you."

Fitz rolled his eyes, wondering why she would think such ridiculous measures would be necessary. "Yes, okay. Thirty seconds," he agreed.

She looked down at her watch. "I'm going to time you," she warned.

He stared back at her silently, starting to feel a little angry at how little she seemed to trust him. He was certainly at least hurt she felt this production was necessary before she shared what was on her mind with the person who was supposed to be her permanent working partner.

"I think we should have a baby," she said, speaking so quickly and nervously that the words all ran together. What she'd said was so garbled, in fact, that for one blissful moment, he could almost make himself believe he'd misheard her. "Thirty seconds!" she reminded him, tapping her watch as she stared at it.

Fitz had no trouble waiting through the thirty seconds before responding, as he was so stupefied by her proposal that he wasn't sure he would ever put a decent sentence together again. He was still tracing back through what she'd said, making sure he wasn't imagining things or misunderstanding what she meant when her waiting period expired.

"Well?" she asked, her forehead wrinkled and her eyes anxious. "What do you think?"

"A _baby_ baby. A human baby," he babbled, still trying to clarify what she could possibly be talking about.

"Of course I mean a human baby, Fitz," she told him, the uncertainty in her features giving way to a more familiar look of exasperation. 

"You and me?" he asked.

"A child with our genetic makeup would have an excellent chance of a successful, happy life," Simmons said, defending her idea with the same tone of voice she'd used earlier to convince him to refine the delivery system of their new prototype. "Each of us is well above average intelligence, and I find us both, objectively speaking, to be aesthetically pleasing."

"Objectively speaking…" he echoed, trailing off when his brain refused to evaluate her idea again, marking it 'you've clearly misunderstood, ask her for clarification' and rejecting it outright.

"You don't find me—" she began, but Fitz shook out of his stupor in time to predict where she was headed with that idea.

"Simmons, you know you're aesthetically pleasing," he told her, cutting her off before she could finish that thought. "But I'm a scrawny, short git with messy hair."

Simmons looked affronted, as though someone other than Fitz himself had just labeled him that way. "That's ridiculous! You're within a standard deviation of average male height. There's not a thing wrong with your build, especially as you don't have the luxury of spending hours in the gym trying to build bulk you don't actually need for any practical purpose." She blinked at him, her mouth open, as she appeared to be searching for the words to finish her thought. "And I quite like your hair."

"Don't you want to...I don't know...meet someone? Get married? Have kids after that?"

"We have some very definite plans for the next decade of our lives, don't we, Fitz? There's so much to accomplish, and for that, we'll need the kind of focus and dedication that doesn't lend itself to much of a social life."

"Yes, but a baby won't take any of our time or energy," he said, letting a little mild sarcasm underscore his point.

"All the details relating to child rearing can be accommodated along with a healthy working life," she argued. "If we avoid transfers and request to stay at this lab, we'd have two acceptable daycare facilities within a mile of our workplace. I've already researched them."

"What about the field work you've been pushing me to consider? I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable taking risks like that while—"

"—I've thought about that," she said, interrupting him. "I'd be willing to shelve my interest in field work. We'll still be young enough to entertain the idea after our child isn't dependant on us any longer." She looked at the floor, but he could still see the disappointed look on her face. "It was long odds we'd be accepted onto a field team, Fitz. Well, you perhaps had a shot, your scores on the field assessment at the Academy were closer to passing than mine were."

"I wouldn't go into the field without you, Simmons! You're the one who's so interested in it. I'd rather stay in the lab, concentrate on our work." He blinked a few times, feeling a little crazy it was the logistics they were arguing over, and not the vast insanity of the idea itself.

"So this is perfect," she said, seemingly delighted, as though the entire matter had been settled.

"Where is this desire for a baby coming from?" he asked, in an attempt to wrest the conversation back to the central issue, instead of getting lost in detail.

"There's a well-established instinctual urge among humans in our age range to procreate," she said, sounding more like a biology lecture than his best friend, trying to talk him into having a baby with her.

"I don't want to sound puritanical, Simmons, but little things like a romantic relationship and a marriage sometimes come before any talk about having a child."

"That just sounds time-consuming and needlessly complicated, Fitz. Not to mention puritanical, as you so helpfully pointed out. They're just social mores, and circumventing them would hardly be unprecedented." She paused, examining him closely. "You aren't dismissing me out of hand, I've noticed. Neither of us have time for dating. I haven't met anyone worth the time or energy, have you? Certainly no one I trust as much as I trust you."

"No, I haven't met anyone I'd even begin to have that sort of interest in," he admitted. He'd been set up on a few blind dates by their labmates, all of them complete disasters. 

"It could take years to find someone compatible. Maybe never, given the demands of our working life. I've been thinking about this, and I don't want to wake up one day and realize I've let my chance to do this pass me by."

"We're still young, Simmons. There's still time, and no reason to rush into something like this."

"We're well into our childbearing years," she argued. "The younger the better, really, if we want to consider the field work option after we've raised our children."

"Children? Plural?"

"It's just an idea," she said, quickly. "Technically speaking, only children have slightly higher career and relationship success rates, but siblings are nice, and the statistical differences aren't that significant. If you'd rather put all our effort into a singleton, though, I wouldn't be averse to talking that through."

"Simmons—"

"—Is it...would you find it disappointing to do this with me, and not with a romantic partner?" she asked, hiding her face in the shadows again as she stared at her feet. 

"Honestly, I can't imagine meeting anyone I get on with as well as we do. I suppose I've assumed I wouldn't be the marrying type. I like focusing on our work." 

He saw the hope on her face and it should have kicked off a series of deafening alarms in his head, but he took a step back and reflected on it objectively. She'd clearly put a significant amount of thought into this, and it had taken a lot of courage for her to approach him with it. She deserved, at the very least, consideration equal to the effort she'd put into her proposal.

"You seemed so disappointed at the idea of doing this unconventionally," Simmons said, the optimistic look on her face mixing oddly with worry. "I thought perhaps you found this alternate scenario...unappealing."

"I don't find it unappealing, I've just never thought about anything like this," he admitted. "Can I…" he began, trailing off as he pushed away his initial reaction, trying to start his thought process over with a fresh perspective. "Perhaps we should both think about it for a few days?"

Simmons nodded excitedly, grabbing both of his hands and squeezing them. "Honestly, I thought you'd dismiss it out of hand. Take the weekend to think it over. I'm not ovulating for another seven to ten days."

"You aren't...what?" he stammered.

"We may have to talk about some private, possibly uncomfortable topics if we're to do this, Fitz. There are aspects to the human reproduction process that vastly increase chance of conception. To have success, we'll have to share quite a bit of information about ourselves with each other."

He couldn't believe he'd managed to overlook the elephant in the room for this long, but he expected his mind had shorted out when faced with this aspect of her proposal. Conception. Conception usually meant...but Simmons couldn't possibly be planning to...with him...could she?

"We may have to share a bit more of ourselves than information, Simmons," he choked out, and watched her cheeks color in response.

"I wasn't suggesting we should attempt to conceive in the conventional way," she explained, whispering to him as though there was anyone around who might overhear them. "Your genetic material can be collected, and though it might be a bit logistically challenging to perform the insemination myself, I believe I have enough understanding of the process to attempt it. I do have a Ph.D. in Biology."

"Perform the insemination yourself?" he said, reduced to repeating what she'd said as he tried to process this particular set of details.

"Colloquially, it's known as the 'turkey baster method'," she explained. "I'd be using much more sophisticated tools than that, and a protocol that could give us a 50-60% chance of success after six months, if performed properly."

"How much research have you done?" he asked. "And what did August have to do with anything?"

"An August conception date would put the due date in May of next year. The most uncomfortable months of pregnancy would occur during the more temperate season, making the process easier to tolerate." Her expression softened, a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. "And May's a lovely month for a birthday, don't you think?"

Her avoidance of his main question, about exactly how much work she'd sunk into researching this, was actually all the answer he needed. If she was reticent to talk about it, that certainly meant she'd put quite a lot of energy into it, more than she was comfortable letting him see.

He couldn't believe it, and he did still intend to take the weekend before he reached a decision, but he was seriously considering it. He heard himself suggest that they shelve the topic for now and head home, but it was honestly because he was feeling a bit too overwhelmed with his sudden desire to agree to it to do anything else. 

He let her carry the conversation on the way home, and she transitioned easily into their more usual topics of what they should scrape together for dinner and when they should go back to the lab for some quiet weekend work. He was only half paying attention, the rest of him picturing how much his life might be about to change.

* * *

Monday had come and gone, and with it, Fitz had given Simmons her answer. That was how he came to be sitting on the edge of his bed the following Saturday morning next to Simmons, nodding as she handed him a sterile specimen jar.

"Is that large enough?" she asked.

He looked down at the suddenly huge-looking container and felt sadly inadequate for a moment. "It should be fine."

"Average human male ejaculate volume is 3.7 millileters," she rattled off, sounding like a biology textbook, "but it can easily vary to upwards of 6 millileters or so, especially following a period of abstinence. Not that I'm assuming you've been abstaining—"

"—Simmons, please don't," he begged, and she honestly looked relieved that he'd stopped her.

"Sorry, I might be a bit nervous," she admitted. "But I do want to go through with it!" she went on to assure him.

Fitz stared at her and waited for her to leave but she just stared back at him. He sighed deeply, wondering if there was some etiquette lesson he'd missed about how to ask his best friend to leave so he could have some privacy to collect the sperm she would use to inseminate herself.

"Simmons, I can do this part on my own," he said, hoping she'd get the point.

She hopped up as though the bed was on fire. "Yes, yes. Of course you can," she said, putting her hand over his, then withdrawing it rather awkwardly. "You have everything you'll need to...complete the job?"

He stared up at her, mouth agape as he considered his answer.

"You won't need a magazine? Or your laptop?" she asked, and he was silently begging her to stop talking again. She looked just as uncomfortable as he felt, so he wasn't sure why she was pursuing this line of questioning in the first place.

"I'm fine," he managed to squeak out, looking up with her and pleading with his eyes for her to go. She took the hint and retreated, shutting the door behind her with a soft click.

He looked at the closed door for a minute and wondered if she would, in her nervousness, have the presence of mind to knock if she was suddenly overcome with a desire to see if he was finished. Fitz got up and turned the lock, deciding today was not the day to take any unnecessary chances.

He delivered the container to her ten minutes later, unable to look her in the eye after what he'd just allowed himself to think about to make the collection possible. Given the enormity of what they were trying to do, he felt it was inevitable he'd find himself somewhat focused on her specifically, but he didn't want to think about it too much. When she disappeared into her own bedroom after giving him a slightly uncomfortable nod, he suddenly didn't know what to do with himself.

Pacing around their living room, he tried to calm himself down. The chances they would be successful on the first try were fairly low, but focusing on that didn't make him feel any better. Instead of relief, he was surprised to find his predominant reaction would be disappointment if it didn't work.

When she emerged from her room, he assumed she would, in typical Simmons fashion, find him and immediately share more details than he would ever require. Instead, she quietly went about making breakfast for herself, and if she hadn't seemed so calm and contemplative, he would have really been worried about her.

"I think everything went rather well," she offered, after he spent the better part of an hour trying to stay subtly close to her without giving the impression he was hovering or pestering her for specifics.

He nodded, telling himself again that they were probably both feeling anxious for nothing. The success rates at this point were low, and they'd likely be trying again in a month. It was important to keep to practical, rational expectations.

* * *

Because the universe seemed to love nothing more than making itself endlessly indefinable to those who valued its mysteries as much as Leopold Fitz, he found himself, three weeks later, being pulled into a hug by a gobsmacked-looking Jemma Simmons. A positive pregnancy test was lying at their feet on the floor where Fitz had dropped it in shock.

* * *

If Fitz had believed Simmons loved schoolwork more than anything while they were at the Academy, he was forced to redefine the scale once Simmons was pregnant. She read every childbirth and parenting book she could get her hands on, even the ones that made her mutter, "rubbish, absolute rubbish" under her breath as she made her way through them. She passed a few on to him and he absorbed as much as he could, which only made him wonder how she could be reading twice as much as he did, all while keeping up with him in the lab and dealing with the physical changes that came with pregnancy. He'd felt inadequate next to her before, but he could only describe his view of her now as total, unadulterated awe.

The two of them had many difficult conversations with their coworkers and family, none of whom seemed to entirely believe they'd procreated platonically. Simmons regularly ranted to him on their way home about some of the other women at work, forever dropping hints to her about getting married. Fitz's mother kept offering to send his grandmother's engagement ring during their weekly calls, a detail he had neglected to share with Simmons though he did dutifully pass on his mum's well-wishes and bits of child-rearing advice.

Fitz tried very hard not to consider too carefully why he could do nothing more than grunt sympathetically when Simmons complained about the women at work, and why he hid his mum's insistence about the ring from her.

* * *

"I think I've decided on a hospital birth," Simmons told him one night as their hands collided in the popcorn bowl, both of them curled up on the couch watching a movie together. "I think there's probably more effective methods and I've been trying to talk myself into one of the alternatives, but when I really think of it, I think I find the hospital the most reassuring option. Is that irrational?" she asked him, and he chewed on a mouthful of popcorn for a minute as he thought over his answer.

"We'll do whatever you feel most comfortable with, Simmons. I don't see any reason to analyze it any further than that," he offered, and she pulled his hand out of the popcorn and gave it a little squeeze.

* * *

Her water broke on the first morning of her thirty-seventh week. It had taken him the first fifteen waking minutes of his day to get her to stop repeating, "But this wasn't supposed to happen yet."

For the next fourteen hours, he went mechanically about the tasks he'd mentally rehearsed a thousand times as the cacophony of the day whirled around them. He'd been afraid the birth and everything leading up to it would be awkward, given that the most revealing thing he'd ever seen her wearing had been a one-piece swimsuit. As he saw her struggling with her pain and using all her energy to harangue the nurses about the safety of the baby, however, his concerns melted away and he took up the position he'd always had in her life. He was her partner, and he did anything he could to help her.

In the early hours of the morning, he found himself sitting on the most uncomfortable chair he'd ever encountered, holding their baby. She was bundled in a blanket, fast asleep, with just her head peeking through the tight swaddle the nurses had taught him how to wrap. When he tore his eyes away from his daughter, they landed immediately on her mother, sleeping with her head pillowed on her hand after finally succumbing to the exhaustion of the day.

* * *

Their first fight upon arriving home again started as a typical Fitzsimmons row. Both of them were talking over the other, the volume of their voices raising as they each tried to convince the other of their viewpoint. The noise eventually woke the baby, and after the hour of rocking and soothing that was necessary to get her back to sleep, they were careful to be quiet when they resumed the argument.

"I wasn't ignoring her, Simmons. Every time she cried while we were in the hospital, it never woke me. I sleep too soundly. I'm not doing it on purpose, I want to help," he whispered, seemingly making up for the lack of volume in his voice by exaggerating the movements of his arms and hands.

"If I'm going to have to wake you up to take your share of nighttime interruptions with the baby, I may as well just deal with it myself. I'll never get back to sleep after walking to your room to get you up," she insisted. "There's no sense in both of us missing the sleep."

"No, I'll figure something out. Perhaps I could build something that's connected to the baby monitor that has a better chance of waking me up. Maybe something that delivers a low-grade electric shock whenever the sound from the monitor goes above a certain threshold," he said, thinking aloud.

"Leopold Fitz, you are not going to shock yourself, that's ridiculous," she chided.

"Are you sure you wouldn't be able to get back to sleep? You always dropped back off when we were in the hospital," he pointed out.

"We were in the same room," she answered. "I didn't have to be awake for long to get your attention."

"Well, we're going to find a way to solve this. There's no way you're going to take all the night shifts." He snapped his fingers, coming up with an idea. "We could trade off whole nights."

Simmons thought about it for a moment, but she eventually shook her head. "I suppose that would be better than nothing, but alternating nights of regular sleep with almost no sleep at all doesn't sound ideal."

He watched as her body language changed, her expression transitioning from dismay to reluctance, a transformation that was accompanied by a tell-tale wringing of her hands. 

"You have a solution, don't you?" he asked, and he heard his tone bordering on accusational. "Come on, Simmons, what is it?" he added, determinedly softening his voice to put her more at ease.

"I have a queen size bed," she began. "It's certainly large enough for two people. I could wake you for some of the nighttime duties if you were right there, and I'd probably be able to get back to sleep."

He took a deep breath, stopping himself from rejecting the idea out of hand before he got a chance to think about it.

"Just until she's ready to move to the crib in her own room," she added. "I should think we could struggle through close quarters with each other for that long, don't you think?"

"You're all right with this?" he asked. "You're sure?"

"Getting adequate sleep is one of the most difficult challenges we'll face this year. Every book I've read, even the ones that were absolute rubbish, were unanimous on this point. And we've slept in the same bed before, I'm sure you remember. It happened a handful of times at the Academy, when we'd study too long and we were both too exhausted to move."

"I get the right side," he said, feeling as though he should do some sort of negotiating.

"I prefer the left side, so this is perfect."

It took a few nights to adjust, but they soon fell into a comfortable rhythm with each other. They never discussed it when they would wake to find one of them had strayed to the other's side of the bed, each of them privately deciding it was another idiosyncrasy that came with the total exhaustion of caring for a newborn baby.

* * *

On their fourth morning home, Fitz stumbled to the kitchen to find Simmons at the table, frowning at a piece of paper as she sipped at her tea. He had switched the kettle back on and was about to ask if he should freshen up her cup as well when he recognized the paperwork she was staring at.

"Simmons, that's the birth certificate paperwork," he said, and she made a lame attempt to cover the paper with her arm.

"It's nothing," she said, defensively. "I'm handling it."

"I thought we turned that in. Isn't the hospital already ordering her birth certificate?" he asked, wishing the kettle would start whistling. He really needed some caffeine to help him wake up.

"I'm having them hold it for a day or so."

"Are you rethinking what we decided on?" he asked, frowning at her. 

This had been one of the many things Simmons had insisted on discussing and resolving while she was still pregnant. She'd talked about the pros and cons of the baby taking one of their last names, or going with a hyphenated version of both of their names. They'd both settled easily on the hyphenated option, with Fitz joking that they were called Fitzsimmons at work so often that hearing it as their daughter's last name shouldn't be too jarring for either of them.

"I don't like the hyphen," she admitted, wincing a little when she heard herself say it.

"So...you want…'Simmons'?" he asked, trying to tamp down a wave of hurt feelings, if she was really interested in removing his name.

"No," she answered, looking at him helplessly, as though she couldn't think of a way to say what she was thinking.

"Then, just 'Fitz'? Or do you want to give her another last name entirely? Wouldn't that be difficult? I thought we were meant to choose one of our last names or hyphenate."

"I don't like the hyphen," she repeated. "And I don't want the baby to have a different last name."

"But you said you didn't want to use 'Simmons' as her last name," Fitz said, beginning to feel irrationally frustrated. "You don't want her to have a different last name from mine? Or yours?"

"From either of us," Simmons said, looking dangerously close to tears. "I know it doesn't make any sense. We have a year to file a Supplemental Name Report form. Could we hold off a bit while I try to think this through?"

Fitz looked at her heartbreakingly confused face and nodded. She got up and pulled him into a tight hug, crying into his chest as he wound his arms around her. 

"It's fine," he whispered into her hair, pulling away just long enough to shut the kettle off before it boiled over. "Everything is going to be fine."

They stayed that way until the baby's cries erupted from the monitor on the kitchen table. Fitz was amazed when he realized he could already recognize it as a cry of hunger, and he was about to share his surprise with Simmons when she pulled back from him a little and said exactly what he was thinking.

He let her go, more reluctantly than he would have thought possible, so she could feed the baby.

* * *

That night, he pretended to be asleep until Simmons appeared to doze off, her breathing going deep and regular next to him as she clutched the blanket around herself. He stared up at the ceiling, thinking about Simmons and her issue with the birth certificate and wondering why she was so fixated on an impossible solution. 

As though she had suddenly developed some sort of psychic ability and was reading his mind, he heard her sleepy voice coming from her side of the bed. "Fitz? Are you still awake?"

"Yeah," he whispered, trying not to wake the baby.

"I'm sorry about the birth certificate. I should have talked to you about it sooner."

"I'm not upset about that," he reassured her. "It's just...I have no idea how to fix it for you. We have different last names. There's no way for the baby to have the same last name as _both_ of us."

"We could change our names, as well," she offered. 

"Yeah, my mum's been after me to change your name the old-fashioned way," he said, the words tumbling out before he could stop them, which he blamed on the ever-present sense of exhaustion that had begun to wear on his ability to regulate himself.

"The old-fashioned...she's asking you to propose to me?" Simmons asked, her whisper going nearly inaudible on the last few words.

"She's pretty traditional, my mum," Fitz explained, wishing he hadn't brought it up.

"It would be a natural opportunity for me to change my name. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch for you to do the same, would it?"

"What would be...Simmons, what are you talking about?"

"Perhaps we should get married," she said, as though she was suggesting something completely mundane.

"Are you—"

"—When we decided to have the baby, we agreed to stay together and raise her, at least until she's off to college. That's quite a long time. Longer than most marriages last, in fact."

"Simmons, I'm not going anywhere. I'm in this with you. You know that, don't you? We don't have to get married to—"

"—No, I believe you. It'd just be so much easier to explain to everyone else this way, and we're planning to be together anyway."

"Are you serious?" he asked, and even though he couldn't see her face in the dark, he could tell by her silence that the tone of his question had hurt her. "Listen, I just want to make sure this is what you want, and not what you think other people believe is the right thing to do. If this is important for _you_ , we could do it tomorrow, as far as I'm concerned." He laughed a little to himself. "I've even got a ring. My mum sent me my grandmother's ring last month."

"Fitzsimmons. No hyphen," she said, decisively. "All three of us. Everyone calls us that at work, we may as well make it official."

Fitz frowned in the dark, wondering if he should leave it at that. He tried to, feeling the seconds tick by, but he couldn't do it. He got out of bed and went to his old room, tearing through the top dresser drawer until he found what he was looking for. He headed back to Simmons, climbing back into bed next to her.

"Where did you go?" she asked, sounding upset. "I thought you might have been angry about—"

"Jemma Simmons," he said, before he lost his nerve. "Will you marry me?" he whispered. 

She sat up, reaching toward him, which made it easier for him to take her hand and thread the ring onto the tip of her finger, ready to finish putting it on her if she accepted.

"Leo Fitz," she began, and he wished it wasn't so dark that he couldn't see her face. "I would be happy to marry you."

He slid the ring onto her finger, letting it settle at the base before he ran his fingertips over it, mostly to convince himself that this was real. On an impulse he couldn't rationally explain, he moved toward her and took her face in his hands, brushing his lips over hers gently before he pulled away.

"Fitz," he heard her whisper, and she pulled him toward her again.

It was then, of course, that the baby began to cry.

* * *

They got up the next morning as though it was any other day, with the exception that they both began to research the technicalities of getting married and how to handle their name change. It became like any other project they'd ever taken on together, and they split up the work and dispatched it as efficiently as possible.

Fitz went to a separate room to call his mum when Simmons called her parents. He got exactly the reaction he'd been expecting, an upset just short of wailing and rending of garments at the idea she'd be missing her son's wedding.

"It's all right, mum," he whispered into the phone. "I'm not sure Simmons sees it as a real marriage, so I'm not sure you're really missing anything. She's determined to have us all take the same last name and she seemed to think this was the easiest way to make that happen."

"Oh, my Leo," his mum answered, and his fingers itched to end the call because he wasn't sure how long he could take the sadness in her voice without being forced to acknowledge his own. 

"We'll take a picture, mum, and I'll send it to you. I'll call you again later, all right?" he asked, hoping she would somehow understand and let him go.

"I love you, and I'm here whenever you need to talk to me, son," she said, and she ended the call.

* * *

They kissed exactly twice that day—the quick peck they gave each other in front of the Justice of the Peace and the midnight kiss from the night before, which Fitz had almost convinced himself had been a hallucination. He believed for months afterwards that those would be the only two kisses they would ever share.

As people often are when it comes to predicting the path of their own lives, he was wrong.

* * *

The days and weeks and months ticked by. To the confusion of their coworkers, they continued to call each other 'Fitz' and 'Simmons' after their name change was official, as neither of them could conceive of calling the other anything else. 

Their daughter grew, hitting each milestone and changing a little bit every day. She was soon almost sleeping through the night, allowing her parents to regain the clear heads that came with more rest. Fitz wondered, occasionally, if Simmons would come out of her haze and realize she'd married him during some sort of baby-induced delirium, and want to annul the whole thing.

* * *

He found her one Saturday afternoon in her bedroom, frowning down at the bassinet, and he immediately worried that there was something wrong with the baby. She saw the look on his face and quickly shushed him with a finger to her lips before he could ask, obviously desperate to keep him from waking their child after she'd finally gotten to sleep.

He tiptoed closer and whispered in her ear. "What's wrong?"

"She's getting too big to sleep in the bassinet," she whispered back. She wore a worried look and he put his arm around her shoulders to pull her closer, laying his cheek on the top of her head when she tucked into his neck.

"You knew she would," he quietly reminded her, and he felt her nod. "We should move her into her crib."

"Do you think the crib would fit in here?" she asked, ducking her head to look up at him hopefully.

"We discussed this, Simmons. When she got too big for the bassinet, we said it would be time for her to sleep in her own room. We'll have the baby monitor, and you can check on her as many times as you like during the night. She's going to be fine," he promised, though he had to push away all the same fears he knew she was struggling with to be able to say that.

"Will you be going back to your room, as well?" she asked, tucking her head back into his chest.

"The first few nights are going to be difficult for both of us," he began, wondering if he was giving her the answer she was hoping for. "Why don't we stick together until we're more settled about her being on her own overnight?"

He could feel her relax against him, and her arm came up to circle his waist, pulling him tighter against her.

"Thanks," she whispered, and they watched their daughter sleep for awhile before they separated. She went back to the book she'd been reading earlier and he returned to his computer, though he found it difficult to concentrate for the rest of the day.

* * *

The clock read 2:14 am when Fitz returned to bed for the third time, tiptoeing and being careful not to shift the bed too much when he got back in, though he was fairly certain Simmons was awake as well.

"How is she?" came her voice, muffled against the pillow.

"The same, I expect, as when you saw her yourself twenty minutes ago," he admitted, laughing a little at himself that he hadn't been able to resist getting up so soon after Simmons had returned. "Sleeping peacefully, snoring away."

"She does not snore," Simmons informed him, sounding affronted.

"She does. Takes after her mother in that," he joked, flinching when her hand connected with his shoulder. There was a long silence.

"Do I really snore?" she asked, sounding rather dismayed.

"I'm just joking, Simmons. You could hear a pin drop while you're sleeping."

It was a lie, of course. She could make a terrible racket, especially when she was sleeping on her back. He said it to make her feel better, and as she'd likely never find out it wasn't true, it seemed like a harmless lie, as lies go.

"You know, you could go to sleep," she told him. "If she stirs, I'll hear it on the monitor. I'm sleeping really lightly these days."

"Don't think I could sleep right now if my life depended on it. Can't understand why. I should be exhausted," he admitted.

Her hand snaked out and found his, under the covers, and she threaded their fingers together. He slid a little closer to her, telling himself it was simply to keep her from straining her shoulder, reaching out so far.

"I don't know how well I'll sleep after you go back to your room, even after we adjust to being separated from the baby overnight. I've grown rather used to not being on my own." 

He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.

"I suppose...there's no reason I can't stay here," he said, holding his breath a little after he got the words out. "If that's what you want," he added hastily, when she didn't answer right away. "We could turn my old room into a study, or a playroom for the little monkey."

"Would you want that?" she asked, sounding as hesitant as he felt.

"I…" he began, and then froze when he couldn't think of the right thing to say.

"Please say you do," she whispered, and her hand tightened on his again.

He sat up, needing to see her face, and she peered up at him in the darkness. He could barely make out her features, but it was enough for him to gather his courage and jump off yet another metaphorical cliff.

"I think I'm in love with you, Simmons," he said, the words whooshing out of him quickly on a single, terrified breath. "Of course I don't want to go back."

She sat up as well, getting up on her knees to face him. "Did you say—"

"I'm in love with you," he repeated, reflecting in a detached, otherworldly part of his brain that it was somehow easier to say it a second time than the first time had been. Perhaps it would get easier still if there was ever a reason for him to say it again. 

"I think I've loved you through every second of this," she answered. "I certainly know I do now."

"Simmons, do you think I could kiss—"

He was interrupted when she surged forward, her mouth slanting over his, and they sunk back into the bed together.

* * *

Their second child, a son, was born when their daughter was a little over two. 

Fitz found himself thinking about it all, late one night when their son was nearly ready to move out of the bassinet himself. He remembered how they'd confessed to each other, continuing the story they'd started when they'd spoken their first words to each other back at the Academy.

He realized, looking over at his wife as she slept next to him, one hand laying inside the bassinet over their son's foot, that they'd done everything backward. They'd had a baby, gotten married, and then discovered they were in love with each other. 

When his daughter poked her tiny face into the room, looking a little frightened and asking to sleep with them, he welcomed her to the middle of the bed, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. According to the parenting advice books, they were supposed to be stern and return her to her room. Perhaps he was wrong, but having the four of them together, even just for this one night, sounded perfect to him.


End file.
